Operations · 7 min read

How to Share a Limited Number of Software Licences Across a Team

Lockit Team · 2026-09-16

Some software is too expensive to buy for everyone who occasionally needs it. A CAD package that three engineers use twice a week. A load-testing tool the performance team runs before releases. A specialist analysis tool licensed to one workstation in the lab. You end up with fewer licences than people, and a recurring question in chat: "who's on the licence?"

This guide covers how to share a small pool of licences without breaking the vendor's terms, without people blocking each other for hours, and without someone in IT answering "is it free?" all day.

Start with the licence model, not the tool

How you can share a licence depends entirely on how it's licensed. Before you set up anything, find out which of these you have. The answer is in your contract or the vendor's licence terms, not in how the software happens to behave.

Model	What it means	Can people take turns?
Named user	Licence assigned to one specific person	Generally no. Sharing a login usually breaks the terms. Reassigning between people may be allowed, often with limits.
Concurrent / floating	N people can use it at once, from a pool	Yes, that's the point. The licence server enforces the count.
Node-locked / device	Licence tied to one machine	Yes, by taking turns on that machine.
Hardware key (dongle)	Licence lives on a USB key	Yes, whoever has the key has the licence.
Site or enterprise	Everyone at a site or company	No sharing problem to solve.

Be strict about this. A coordination tool makes it easy to see who is using something; it doesn't make sharing a named-user login compliant. If the terms say one person, one licence, the fix is buying more seats or reassigning them properly through the vendor's admin console, not a booking system.

The cases where coordination genuinely helps are the second, third and fourth rows: floating pools, licensed machines, and hardware keys.

Floating licences: the server counts, but doesn't tell you who

Concurrent licences come with a licence server that hands out seats and refuses the N+1th person. The server enforces the limit. What it usually doesn't do well is tell the person who got refused anything useful: who has the seats, whether they're actually using them, and when one might come free.

The server landscape also changes. JetBrains, for example, discontinued its legacy Floating License Server (FLS) on 1 January 2026, and now points customers who want floating licences to License Vault in JetBrains IDE Services. If your team relied on an older licence server, check whether it's still supported before building process around it.

The practical problems with floating pools are human:

Idle holds. Someone opens the application in the morning, then spends the day in meetings with it running. The seat is taken.
No queue. The refused person retries every twenty minutes, or messages around asking who can close it.
No visibility for planning. Nobody knows whether you need a third seat or just need people to close the app.

Node-locked machines and dongles: physical turn-taking

A licence tied to one workstation or a USB key is simpler and worse. The constraint is physical: one person at the machine, or one person with the key. The usual coordination is a sticky note, a calendar, or walking over to check.

This is where "who has it, until when" matters most, because checking costs a walk or a remote desktop attempt that kicks someone off.

A process that works

Whatever the model, the same five steps apply.

1. Inventory every shared licence

List each licence or seat people take turns on. For each one, note:

Licence model (from the table above)
Where it lives (machine name, key location, server)
Who uses it and roughly how long a session lasts
Who the vendor contact or internal owner is

2. Model each seat as a named resource

If you have three floating seats, it's tempting to treat them as one thing with a count. For coordination, it's simpler to give each seat or machine its own name:

cad-seat-1
cad-seat-2
loadtest-licence
lab-ws-3 (licensed analysis package)
dongle-matlab-blue

A person takes a specific one, which means everyone can see exactly which are free. When you add a seat, add a resource.

3. Set a default hold length that matches real sessions

If a typical CAD session is half a day, a 4-hour default makes sense. Long enough that people aren't interrupted, short enough that a forgotten hold clears itself by the afternoon. Anyone who needs a full day can ask for it when they take the seat.

4. Make releasing the normal ending

The biggest gain in a shared licence pool is getting people to give seats back when they finish, not when the day ends. Make releasing one action, and make it visible to people waiting so they're pinged rather than polling.

5. Review usage before buying more

Before renewal, look at how often seats were all taken and how often people waited. If one seat was idle most of the time, you may have one too many. If people waited every day, the case for another seat writes itself.

Doing this in Slack, Discord or Teams with Lockit

Lockit is a chat bot for reserving shared resources, and licences are one of the most common things teams put in it. Here's the setup in Slack.

Create a resource per seat or machine with @Lockit new. Put the useful details in the description: licence model, where the machine or key is, who to contact. Optionally pick a channel, for example #licences, where lock and release updates are posted.

Take a seat when you start:

@Lockit lock cad-seat-1

You can choose a duration when you lock. If you don't, Lockit uses the resource's default, then the workspace default (48 hours if nothing is set, so set a sensible per-resource default like 4 hours).

When all seats are taken, the locked resource shows an "Alert when released" button. Click it and you're pinged when the holder releases. If it's urgent, "Ask for takeover" sends the holder a request with Approve / Reject Request buttons.

Give it back when you're done:

@Lockit release cad-seat-1

People can also see and release their locks from Lockit's App Home tab, which helps with seats held "just in case".

On Discord, the same thing is /lockit lock resource:cad-seat-1 duration:4 hours. On Microsoft Teams, @Lockit lock cad-seat-1 4 hours.

For the usage review in step 5, Lockit doesn't produce utilisation reports. On paid plans, you can poll GET /resources from the REST API, which returns each resource's status, holder and lock end time, and write a snapshot to your own log or spreadsheet every few minutes. A few weeks of that is enough to see how often all seats were taken.

The free plan covers 2 resources with unlimited members, which is enough for a two-seat pool. Starter covers up to 100 resources and adds the API. See pricing.

What Lockit doesn't do

To be clear about the boundaries:

It doesn't talk to your licence server, so it can't enforce the seat count. The vendor's server still does that.
It doesn't know whether the application is actually open. A lock is a person's statement that they're using the seat.
It doesn't make sharing a named-user licence compliant.

What it does is replace "who's on the licence?" messages with a list anyone can check, and turn waiting into a notification.

Licences are one kind of shared resource. If the same team also shares physical hardware, hardware lab booking and managing shared test devices for mobile QA cover those. For the norms around how long to hold something and how to ask for it back, see lock etiquette: durations and takeovers.

FAQ

It depends on the licence. Floating or concurrent licences are designed to be shared up to a count. Named-user licences usually aren't, and sharing a login often breaks the terms. Read your licence agreement or ask the vendor before setting up any sharing.

Our licence server already limits seats. Why add anything?

The server enforces the count but rarely tells a refused user who holds the seats or when one will free up. A visible reservation list with release notifications cuts the waiting and the "can someone close it?" messages.

How long should a licence hold last by default?

Match it to a typical session. For tools used in half-day blocks, around 4 hours works. People who need longer can ask when they take the seat, and anyone who finishes early should release.

How do we decide whether to buy another seat?

Track how often all seats were in use and how often people waited. If you poll your reservation tool's status every few minutes for a few weeks, you'll have real numbers to bring to the renewal conversation.

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